God is sovereign over providential timings and placings, including the mutations in kidney DNA, if you remember my nephrectomy account (he is even if you don’t remember it or haven’t seen it ; - ). It is not a real stretch to presume extraordinary timing and placing of prebiotic molecules as well.
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It sounds nice, but all I can imagine is molecules arranging…
I think @Dale has already answered that question for me.
I’m not discounting the possibility of a miraculous event. But the way I see it, even if God actually arranged some molecules or whatever to become alive, that will still mean that some kind of process occured that we could analyze scientifically.
I think there are more interesting questions, like for example, how many times did life began on this planet, how long it took to get started once the 
was ready and so on.
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For me, it is unclear how we could analyze this scienfically. The problem is that we don’t know at what stage the supernatural stops and the natural takes it over. It is a unique situation long ago. Take in comparison the resurrection of Christ. At certain time point in the tombe, His body started to become alive. His blood unclotted, His heart started pumping, all billions of dead cells started to re assemble themselves, neurons started firing. He opened His eyes and came out. I don’t think, it is reasonable to try to explain these processes in natural terms. However, in my opinion, the resurrection of Christ is more easily explained scientifically in natural terms than abiogenesis. His molecules were all already in the right place at the right time in His dead body.
I am new here, and I don’t know of your nephrectomy. However, what you write here makes sense. Your argument is that even if science doesn’t see a gap, God is involved. However, in the situation of abiogenesis science shows a gap. A fundamental deep gap. If God is involved then in placing prebiotic molecules in the right conformation, what is the difference with a Biblical miracle?
Ok, I don’t agree with this. It sounds like some kind of zombie awakening, rather than transformation into a different type of physical body.
Yes, agree with this, but it’s because I believe that Christ was completely transformed, rather than just healed up and became alive again like a Frankenstein, THAT could be explained scientifically, at least in theory.
Disagree, because as explained above, I don’t think that the resurrection was a matter of molecules being in the right place, which on the other hand, I (and a lot of scientists and other forum members) believe is exactly what happened with abiogenesis (we could be wrong of course).
For time being, yes. But we do expect that one day there will be scientific explanation. Is it so hard to imagine that one day one of these experiments in the lab will yield positive results?
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But of course we also don’t know whether anything supernatural played any role whatsoever. If the divine will was that nature should arise naturally, can we be so sure divine intent would be insufficient without divine tinkering? Must God be meddlesome to be God? That might just be us projecting our own limitations where they don’t apply.
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That is a good point. I don’t think that my description is that of a zombie. A zombie is not alive. No blood flowing, no neurons firing. But zombies don’t exist, so it is a bit difficult to discuss that. However it is correct that the complete transformation of Christ’s body is of a different kind compared to heal up and become alive. Therefore, the raising of Lazarus is a better example.
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There are two different kinds of miracles, one where the natural laws God has instituted are suspended and the other where they are not. The latter is God’s typical M.O. in his providential interventions into the lives of his children.
Even Jesus calming the storm on Galilee was of that sort, consisting of miraculous timing and placing. What natural laws were broken? None. A man in a boat said something and a storm suddenly stopped. That is certainly more than atypical (especially since the man was addressing the storm!), but no natural laws were broken.
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As non native speaker, your second sentence is for me difficult to understand. Sorry for that. I think that the answer is no, but I understand that for you natural is superior to supernatural.
I agree. However, what we experience as laws are no real laws at all. They are only the way God works regularly. If He chooses to work another way, there is no law to break, He simple does it another way. So for God there is no difference between natural and supernatural.
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Jeremiah reports it differently:
This is what the LORD says: If I have not established my covenant with the day and the night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth…
Jeremiah 33:25
He’s built an incredibly complex machine, if you will (and it includes evolution), and it has parts that he sustains without tinkering, so to speak.
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No I could have said it more simply. My bad.
When I said …
… I meant if God chose for nature to be enough who are we to say “no, God must actually do it directly Himself”?
I don’t think what is important about God has much to do with the creation of the cosmos. So I’m not s Christian.
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You read this text more literally than I do. I think that for you the problem with that literal reading is, that this text regarding day and night is based on Genesis 1. Therefore logically you need to read genesis 1 also literally.
Nature is sufficient. Supernature is superfluous.
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Yeah it is. Nature had the ten billion cubic kilometre Earth lab with every physico-chemical gradient going over hundreds of millions of years. We need to start with exactly reproducing pre-biotic warm alkali vents. You got a spare billion dollars or ten? But there no gaps in nature’s capacity to explain. Only in our natural mesoscopic incapacity to understand, short circuited by our natural fallacies.
You don’t think God has instituted fixed laws in nature. Huh. That sounds YECish, speaking of literalism. They like to have the speed of light variable and radioactive nuclide decay rates variable as well, not mention breaking all sorts of other natural laws.
Depending on your view of scriptural inspection, maybe not? And why was he necessarily thinking about Genesis 1 when he wrote it? Perhaps it was just based on the consistency of the kind of day he had experience with, and I bet that was probably close to a 24-hour one. ; - )
Nope. Therefore logically you need to think more logically.
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I still stick to the point that it’s not possible to directly apply this ancient text to modern scientific laws. I think that if you do, you have to assume: 1) that the prophet is speaking about our scientific laws which is anachronistic, and 2) that day and night are such modern scientific fixed laws, which they are not. Day and night can change over time, and during the timeline of the universe, have changed.
However, intitially the only point that I wanted to make with fixed laws is, that even there are strict regularities in our physical world, God is still working. He is not on holiday, while the world is doing it all at its own. He is not less busy with the regularities than if he does some extraordinary. I think that you agree with that?
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I think that this is the key of the discussion. What makes you to think this? I would suggest the opposite to be true.
What that we’re not mesoscopic? Halfway between the cosmic (With the relativity of simultaneity? And the 11D bulk brane multiverse?) and the quantum (With entangled superpositioned indeterminacy? With zero-point energy?). That we have full capacity to understand? That there are therefore true gaps in what nature declares? Like what? That those gaps have nothing to do with our being inside a bone box of jelly?
I wrote this in the context of abiogenesis. Abiogenesis toke place on a scale of molecules and cells. Hundred thousends are daily busy with that stuff. Current scientific knowledge says that there is no natural mechanism leading to abiogenesis. When one says that this is due to an incapacity to understand, it might be nice to hear what else might give such understanding.